Trinidad Day 1: The Archery Federation

"What are you doing here?"
Not the usual greeting I receive when I travel, but it makes sense.  Trinidad gets most of its income from oil, not tourism, so they don’t really get a lot of tourists, especially outside of Carnival season.  My interest in visiting was piqued when I made a map for work depicting nesting beaches for the leatherback sea turtle.  I was just about finished when they received data from the beaches of Trinidad that were off the scale—literally, I had to adjust the symbology to accommodate it. (You can see the map here).  While you’re lucky to see a few a turtles over the entire season at some beaches, you’ll see several in a single night at these beaches. 

My other reasons to visit Trinidad & Tobago:
·  Not as touristy as other Caribbean countries
·  Interesting ethnic blend:  40% Indian descent, 40% African descent, 20% mix and misc.  This made for some interesting music and
·  delicious food.

It took a few years to make it happen, but by that point I was able to convince two friends, Stephanie and Jeanette, to join me.  As we landed at the airport, we saw a chauffeur's sign with "Archery Federation" on it, which I adopted as our team name.  I’d expected to buy road maps once we got there, but there was none to be found.  Thankfully, the tourist maps were surprisingly sufficient for getting us around the island and I’d already done a little research.

As the cars drive on the left side, Jeanette was our designated driver and turned out to be a rock star at it.  We drove up through Port-of-Spain, and after dropping our things off at the hotel continued on to the northwestern shore for a Bake & Shark dinner at Maracas Beach. 

northwest coast on the drive to Maracas Beach

I doubt the meat is actually shark these days, but what I can tell you is that it was fantastic!  There was a counter of over a dozen unrecognizable condiments (chutneys, etc.), but I randomly chose several and the combination was delicious.

Bake & Shark

 We had a brief after-dinner swim at dusk and called it a night.